What to know about the plane crash near Teterboro Airport.



Residents of Hasbrouck Heights are always concerned about possible plane crashes due to the proximity of Teterboro airport, Mayor Jack DeLorenzo said after Monday's deadly crash of a Learjet. The aircraft fell out of the sky less than 3,000 feet from the Teterboro runway, hitting the ground in a fireball in an industrial area of Carlstadt, another community that borders the airport.

“It’s always a concern in the back of people’s minds,” DeLorenzo said. 

The mayor noted that a small plane had crashed in Hasbrouck Heights, in a backyard of a home on Washington Place in 1999.

“I’m sure it is safe, but just the proximity of Hasbrouck Heights and some of the planes do come in very low on the regular basis,” DeLorenzo said. 

The mayor said that residents were concerned with the new flight path by the airport and that he had sat for three hours recently and timed the airport traffic. A flight came in every two minutes during that time, DeLorenzo said. “It’s a very heavily traveled airport with a lot of air traffic,” he said. 

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Local residents at Teterboro Landing had mixed feelings about the airport being so close by, especially right after the plane crash on Monday afternoon.

A BJs Brewhouse employee Bryan Scholes said that when he arrived at work he saw heavy black smoke behind Teterboro airport, which is located right across the street from the restaurant.

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Although he works so close to the airport, he said he didn't get nervous. "I hear flying is safer than driving," Scholes said. "Sometimes in the restaurant we hear a rumble during takeoff and landings, but don't think anything of it." 

Two Hackensack employees strongly disagreed and said they wished the airport didn’t fly across Hackensack. One employee said that the window panes in the building she works at shake during the day from the flights. “This time it crashed into an airport, what if it’s a school next time?” said the woman, who declined to give her name. “I wonder if other small airports have these same problems?”

Kelly: The accident waiting to happen at Teterboro has happened. Again.

A Ridgefield Park resident disagreed and said she was more likely to get into a car accident driving home than a plane accident. Another Ridgefield Park resident, who works in Hackensack, Grinnell, who didn’t want to give her last name, disagreed saying the planes do fly too close, especially in Hackensack where there are many high-rise apartment buildings. 

A Texas Road House Employee, who lives in Rutherford, said that the planes flew over his house all the time but that he never really gave it a second thought until the crash Monday. He added that he thought the airport was safe. 

A woman staying at the Travel Lodge hotel in Teterboro said that she had seen from her window the parking lot of a factory filled with people moments before the plane crashed. She said that the area was empty when the plane crashed but that just a couple of minutes before it looked like a warehouse shift had ended and many people had been in the vicinity.

The woman, who asked to be identified only as Clarissa, said the plane had been upside down in the air before hitting the ground and being "incinerated." 

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